Objective driven cities

Cities would be designed with a purpose in mind. And its objective would be advancing that purpose.

Certain cities would be dedicated to a specific area of scientific research for example. People proficient in that scientific branch would relocate there and form their families there. Their children move on elsewhere when they're old enough.

This way, you get all the best minds in one place, pursuing one goal, getting the best results in the fastest times. Of course, other types of people would exist there to maintain it, but only as much as necessary to do so.

Civilization might better be seen as the heights an individual human might rise to, in and of himself. The end product being that he can become 'civilized'. The teeming termite mound of, say, Manhattan, doesn't seem, by comparison, particularly 'civilized'.

Perhaps it is better to define what 'civilization' is, as an individual accomplishment, rather than give it a blanket definition that covers losers and not-losers, alike.

We pretty much have that already but more at the scale of the facility with one or more close buildings. Hospitals and universities are examples. So too are landfill waste sites and city hall. Many of these are part of what composes a city.

This is meant to be with reference to our time's today I'm guessing? With the lack of necessity braiding the land and selecting the most potent societies (for a variety of reasons I presume) taken as an assumption?

Even then, I'm a bit skeptical as to this approach, for it appears to render cities big 'employment zones' for a single set of purposes. I think it's fine to have an activity one's city takes pride in (Look, I come from Genoa! Pesto! Radical huh?!?!?) but ultimately this does not propagate the amount of tension to inspire creativity.

I mean, would this model of society have space for your Nietzsches?

Edit: Though perhaps it will be said, NO society could ever have space for a Nietzsche, which is precisely why they're a Nietzschean type of mind. Though if civilization and circumstance is responsible for the cultivation of these characters, then what would this society have going for it? Ah whatever.

I believe your idea of specialization is going to result in the creation of MORE cities than we have now. A city for this, and that.

Realistically, efforts to manage the size of each city will result in a massive centralized administrative bureaucracy. The development of this power structure becomes more inevitable when you consider the actual tendencies of human behavior. How do you ensure children relocate themselves willingly? Family bonds and an affinity for the place one grows up will go a long way towards ensuring children stick around in adult hood rather than up and go to designated city X. This concept assumes relocation is always economically viable.

Take it one step further. Consider that a city which produces important but not commercially viable product will have a difficult time securing the resources necessary for life from the cities who do produce them. This situation is likely to be resolved through centralized power structures.

They're good for certain things. They're more efficient at getting certain things done, and faster at it than the alternative ways. Depending on what you're willing to achieve, certain designs might be more advantageous. Ensuring the availability of the required facilities, their positions, their proximity to certain other facilities, can help get things done, and quicker.

Vigilance, these cities would be managed externally. They will be provided with any resources they may need. The city relieves its residents from anything that might concern them so they can focus solely on whatever the cities specializes in. If their children don't want to move out, they'd have to valuably contribute to the city's specialty. Or get moved out by force.

I'm really discussing feasibility. Economics were brought up to show how your model requires the creation of a large administrative bureaucracy which is essentially a micromanagement agent. Beyond that structure, I think my second paragraph hints at the brittle nature of specialization.

Myself I prefer resilience which tends to come out of decentralization. Of course, you lose efficiency and the ability to pursue large scale projects such as Empire building. Worth it to me, but others seem to want a society pursuing goals and that's nothing I understand or want.

I don't see any way through the way things are toward a sustainability model without some intervening global catastrophe of such magnitude that all the existing centers of power are cast down. If any aren't, they'll step in to fill the power vacuum and it will end up a risky liability for the others to adopt a progressive deep ecology and decentralization model. It would have to start with a world government and that would only reinstate the micromanagement problem along with the catastrophic system failure problem at the very largest scale. On second thought, the secondary and tertiary world powers could collaborate to no longer play along with the contentious primary power centers, radically shift away from globalism, decentralize internally and take on a limited tech, deep ecology level of affluence.